Forza Horizon 6 has its review verdict on record, and it is a clean sweep. IGN's Luke Reilly played the open-world racer on Xbox Series X and came away calling it "unequivocally the best" game in the series, "the new standard in open-world racing," and "a masterpiece."

The review positions Forza Horizon 6 as the high point of developer Playground's entire catalog, a claim that carries extra weight because of where Reilly started. He opens with a concession: Forza Horizon 3 may forever be his favorite open-world racer. "Who doesn't love driving around their own backyard?" The familiarity of home turf is the strongest loyalty a sequel can face. A critic who names a sentimental favorite and then crowns the new game anyway earns more trust than one with no prior attachments. The verdict also says something about the series' trajectory. Forza Horizon 3 set a standard that has held for years, and Reilly's willingness to name a new best is a statement about how far Forza Horizon 6 goes beyond it.

Running like a titan

The technical side of the review is all praise. Reilly says Forza Horizon 6 has not skipped a beat and "runs like a titan" on Xbox Series X. For a game built around high-speed driving, that stability is the foundation everything else sits on. A racer that stutters under load loses the illusion of speed, and an open-world racer carries that risk across a far larger map than a traditional track game.

Aesthetically, the review is emphatic. Reilly calls Forza Horizon 6 the best-looking and best-sounding game Playground has produced to date. Racing game praise tends to focus on the visuals, but audio is where much of the experience lives. The growl of the engine and the way the mix shifts as speed climbs carry a big share of the thrill. Reilly's decision to call out audio as a standout suggests the studio treated presentation as a whole package rather than a graphics budget.

The map is the product

The world itself draws the loudest praise. Reilly calls it the most wonderfully realized map the studio has ever crafted, dense with authentic details and full of driving roads he describes as stunning. In an open-world racer, the map is the product. Every event and every casual joyride runs on the quality of the roads and the believability of the environment around them. A pretty map with dull roads collapses under its own weight. Reilly's account points to a world that holds up on both counts.

Exploration gets a specific compliment. The game is rewarding to explore, Reilly says. That is the quiet feature that separates a great open world from a merely large one. A map rewards wandering when the driving itself is enjoyable and the details you find along the way feel like discoveries rather than filler. It may also be why Reilly says he cannot stop playing, a confession that lands harder than any checklist of features.

A campaign with a payoff

The campaign earns its own praise. Reilly calls it well-paced with a great payoff. Pacing is the hardest problem in open-world design. Too much structure and the world shrinks into a corridor of waypoints. Too little and the campaign loses shape. A well-paced campaign that still leaves room for free exploration is the balance the genre has chased for years, and Reilly says Forza Horizon 6 found it.

His closing verdict leaves no room for ambiguity. "Make no mistake: Forza Horizon 6 is unequivocally the best." Reilly keeps his Forza Horizon 3 affection on the record, but he draws a clear line between a personal favorite and the series' new benchmark.

What the review does and doesn't cover

The review is based entirely on the Xbox Series X version. Forza Horizon 6 is also available on Xbox Series S and PC, and the source material does not address how the game performs on those platforms. Players on Series S or PC will need more coverage before they know what to expect on their own hardware.

The available information also leaves some obvious questions open. There is no mention of a release date, the map's setting, or a car list. Those details typically anchor coverage of a racing game, and their absence means the conversation around Forza Horizon 6 is still in its early stages.

What the verdict means

The "new standard in open-world racing" label is not the kind of phrase reviewers hand out casually. Open-world racing is a crowded genre, and competitors keep pushing the bar higher. To place Forza Horizon 6 above every competitor and every prior entry in its own series is a strong signal about the game's execution.

For players, the practical takeaway is straightforward. The review points to a game that runs with confidence, presents itself at a new high for the studio, and fills its world with reasons to keep playing. Those are the qualities that decide whether an open-world racer becomes a habit or gets shelved after a week.

By Reilly's account, Forza Horizon 6 delivers on the fundamentals that matter most to this genre: it runs cleanly, it looks and sounds like a new high for the studio, and it pairs a world worth exploring with a campaign worth finishing. The combination, according to the review, was enough to unseat a personal favorite that had the advantage of hometown nostalgia. Forza Horizon 3 keeps its place in Reilly's heart. The crown, as he tells it, belongs to Forza Horizon 6.